I found Lawrence Garza crying in the kitchen of his empty home at 5560 S. Windermere St. in Littleton.
Garza, 61, said his cousin’s husband, the mortgage broker, had put him into an adjustable-rate mortgage in 2004.
Garza remembers signing some of the paperwork in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. But he said he does not remember the exorbitant terms.
Over the years, his monthly payments skyrocketed from about $1,950 to more than $3,000. Garza, a retired U.S. Army captain, can’t afford $3,000 a month. So now he must sell his house or face losing everything to foreclosure.
“I’m being forced to sell something that I once could afford,” he said.
And why?
“It was never explained to me that the interest rate could increase a percentage point every six months, and that it was only a matter of time until it had increased from 7.15 to 13.15.”
Garza originally listed the gorgeous brick-and-stucco ranch-style home for more than $400,000. Now, with pending foreclosure proceedings filed against him, it’s down to $329,000.
The home features wood and marble floors, granite countertops, alder cabinets, a spacious open floor plan with giant living and family rooms, and a walkout basement. It’s also close to light rail.
“He’s reduced it to a very low price,” said Garza’s real estate broker, Max Castillo. “This is the situation a lot of people find themselves in to avoid foreclosures.”
Garza suffers from dementia, memory lapses, hearing loss and constant pain after severe head injuries he sustained in 1978. While on duty at Fort Hood, an unknown assailant knocked him to the ground and kicked him in the head so many times that he was ultimately granted retirement on full disability.
He speaks slowly, straining to find the words to describe his misfortunes. Garza has been divorced three times. He once had two sons. His older son, Lawrence, a pilot, died when his single-engine plane crashed in Washington state in 1989. He was 22. His younger son, Darrell, died in 2003, at age 33, from a freak bout of bacterial spinal meningitis.
Darrell was a contractor and had helped build Garza the home he may be about to lose. When he died, Garza had to refinance to pay off his son’s interest in the house. That’s when, he said, he turned to independent mortgage broker Anthony Rivera, who was married to his cousin.
Garza said he trusted Rivera as family.
Rivera was “aware of the fact that I suffer from dementia and am 100 percent disabled, as I listed my veterans compensation and my Social Security payment as my income,” he said.
I wanted to ask Rivera why he took a man on a fixed income and put him into a variable-rate mortgage.
But Rivera told me he was not at liberty to discuss individual clients. Nor would Rivera address Garza’s complaint that he’d taken advantage of a mental disability to bag a fat commission on a complex loan.
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you with this,” Rivera said. “I am a mortgage broker. I’m not a psychiatrist or a psychologist.”
After the unexpected death of his son Darrell, Garza found himself juggling all kinds of debt. Garza had co-signed loans for his son’s contracting business.
“Before my son’s death, I had very good credit,” he said.
In the financial mess he was left, though, he found his credit score slipping. As his monthly payments grew unbearable, he said he called the lender — Option One Mortgage, owned by H&R Block — for help.
“They first wanted to refinance the property at 10.75 percent,” Garza said. “I told them, that’s credit-card rates. That’s too much money. Then I went to other companies they wouldn’t even touch me.”
He said that when he even tried to make payments in arrears, Option One rejected the payments.
Option One spokeswoman Christine Sullivan couldn’t tell me anything about Garza’s case when I called her on Friday. As a result of my inquiry, though, she put his file up for review and told me Option One would put a 60-day hold on the foreclosure sale they had slated for the end of January.
Garza, already, has gone to great extents to avoid default. He moved out of the house and rented it out last April. The rent, however, did not cover his burgeoning mortgage payments, and he soon fell behind.
Then his tenants abruptly broke their lease and moved out. They left behind a letter, complaining about court servers and people from Option One showing up on their doorstep looking for Garza.
I guess Garza had served his country, and now his countrymen were serving him.
Garza said he got the bum’s rush when he showed up at District Court in Arapahoe County on Monday. The judge, he said, just shuffled him along with all the other foreclosure cases.
“It’s a real shame that a judge would not hear his plight,” said Castillo. “He’s a very upright individual. He’s tried so hard to remedy the situation. But it’s an antagonistic legal system and lender system.
“This is an abuse of people,” Castillo said. “It’s not right. But it’s happening all over, causing depreciation throughout the total market.”
If Garza does not sell his house soon, the lender may take it away.
“There’s probably $70,000 in equity in this house,” Garza said. “But they’ll turn around and sell it for less than the loan. And then they’ll sue me for what they don’t get.”
There’s more to this house than money, though.
“It’s extremely difficult for me,” Garza said, “to lose something that I cherish because my son built it.”
Al Lewis’ column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Respond to Lewis at , 303-954-1967 or alewis@denverpost.com.
